Punctuation
by winter machine
Summary: "Hope is something she hasn't dared taste since the wheels touched down three thousand miles from her memories.  Hope is too dangerous:  it might force her to expel a breath.  It might force his hand."  Addison and Derek oneshot, Season 2.


_Fatema's prompt: angsty pregnancy scare (is there any other kind) in the trailer. Takes place in Season 2. Flexing my Addek muscles in the hope of getting back on the wagon of my unfinished stories. _

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><p><strong>Punctuation<strong>

It's probably nothing.

A coincidence, maybe. Disorientation, manifested physically. Her body's as confused as she is, full stop.

It's probably nothing so she walks the still-unfamiliar halls of the hospital wearing the secret close to her chest, a little lower than she holds the others. She's not _sure_, not exactly, it's just that she's late and she's never late and-

_Are you sure about this? I'm so sorry, Doctor, it's just that we're required to ask again, you know, right before. We have to ask if you're sure._

She's not sure of anything. She's exhausted, battling frizz from the unaccustomed humidity, legs cramped from sleeping in a glorified murphy bed. In a way the last painful six weeks of her life have been one shaky indrawn breath. Her lungs are full of rainy salt air, her head constantly abuzz. He looks right through her in the hospital, past her in the trailer, anywhere but her in the car.

She loses a patient before lunch. She loses her lunch after that. The hyena pack of interns _watches_ her, and she lets the clacking of her heels lie to them about how much she cares.

It's just that she's never late.

_About four weeks - you should expect to start another cycle_ now.

(And how.)

But she ignores it and he ignores her and a mean little part of her wants to watch the secret grow, swell until it announces itself, screams braver than she can. Let him ignore that.

Two days disappear.

"Can we - do you think you'll be home tonight?"

"I don't know."

There's something sharper than a wall between them. Maybe it's secrets, maybe it's her full-to-bursting lungs, maybe it's all the things she has to forget happened so she can get through the day. She has tricks and they work but sometimes at night they fail her and she huddles next to her husband's frosty shoulder and the things she doesn't want to remember trickle in.

_I'm here, Addison. I fucked up and I'm sorry but I'm here, I'm right here, and the only thing we can't get through is if you walk away. _

"Derek, do you think tonight you'll-"

"I have a surgery."

Three days.

Her body is still silent, a secret. Alone on the thin mattress she lets her fingers trail under ivory satin, linger over the curve of her hip. Would he look at her again? If it was really...something?

_Look at me! At me, Addison, not that empty fucking house!_

"Derek-"

"Not now, Addison."

Four.

Hope is something she hasn't dared taste since the wheels touched down three thousand miles from her memories. Hope is too dangerous: it might force her to expel a breath. It might force his hand.

For just a moment, the fourth night, she indulges in the sun-dappled fantasies that embarrass her in daylight. Grabs sticky handfuls of them, sweet toffee visuals of auburn curls and rosy apple cheeks. They could do it this time, maybe. Leave this insufferable tin can behind, build an idyllic woodsman house of reclaimed what-the-fuck-ever and fill it with childproof putty and finger paints. Richard, far more of a champion of this marriage than either of its participants, would gladly give her time off. She could slow down. Rock her own baby to sleep instead of monitoring someone else's five-inch preemie.

She falls asleep alone.

Five days.

She wakes up achey and tips the rest of the red wine down the insubstantial metal sink. It's medicinal.

Six.

He wanted one. They talked about it, but she wasn't ready. "Sam and Nai-" he started once and she cut him off. "Naomi wasn't in 30 Under 30 this year, was she?" Derek looked at Maya and saw her saucer eyes and tiny pink ballet slippers and the painfully trusting way she'd slip a soft little hand into theirs. Addison heard the nights Naomi stayed up to soothe fevers and nightmares, the patients she turned down to make parent-teacher conferences and the fellowship that would have taken her too far from the baby-sitter. "We have time," she reminded Derek.

You always think you have time, don't you? Addison, who was always five minutes early for everything, can't imagine that her time is up now. That this is where it ends.

_Goddamn it, Addison, that's my baby. Not his!_

But it was all of theirs. She lay on her back, traced pure white ceiling tiles with swollen eyes and wished she could suction away the last six months of her life. Abort it. It's just a word, you know. It just means stop.

_Stop, Addison. Just stop it. You don't need to do this._

Can hope be fear? Whatever's inside of her feels like judgment; created in coldness and nurtured on coffee and the surreptitious cigarettes she'd been desperately relieved to discover Preston also liked to sneak on the roof. It's a mystery, maybe as beautiful as her stupid daydreams or as ugly as she feels on the rare occasions he looks at her.

On the seventh night she starts counting.

When was the last time he'd touched her, anyway - that time at the inn had been the last one she remembered with any clarity. He'd tumbled her straight from the shower to the sheets like he used to in New York, giggling and towel-tangled, beard burn up and down her jaw evidence that he was too lustily distracted to shave. In the trailer he rolls over her dutifully, on occasion. It feels like submission when she initiates, like punishment when she turns passive, lets him bury the stress of a difficult day somewhere inside of her.

Now she sits on a flimsy deck chair while the lake gazes back at her, mouths the cold neck of a beer, the kind he likes. It's just a few sips. Just to help her remember.

She thinks it was maybe a month ago. She thinks it was one of the first times in the trailer after she moved in. She's pretty sure she cried afterwards. She was quiet. (Derek wouldn't hear her if she screamed: the quiet is for her. She's still a Montgomery.)

She kneels in the soft grass like a prayer, vomits graffiti onto property that will never feel like hers.

On the eighth night he comes home.

He's distracted, curls mussed, eyes faraway, probably thinking about the anemic intern and her childish, scratchy voiced worship of him. It's a pity, really, she's a smart girl - she probably could have been extraordinary, but now she'll tow after the great Derek Shepherd and spend her intern year pining and if there's anything Addison knows it's that you can't make up for lost time.

"Derek."

He glances up, still scrolling through his blackberry.

"Can you sit-

"I'm tired, Addison."

"Derek, I have to tell you something."

He drops, exasperated, on the side of the bed, the drawstring on his pajama bottoms lopsided and it's somehow terribly endearing. She's filled with pity that feels like love that feels like hate. She's filled and there's no room for anything else and when he presses his lips to hers - he'd rather kiss her than talk to her, rather fuck her than forgive her - for a moment she mistakes the moisture for lust.

"Shit!"

She jumps up.

"Addison?"

The metal door bounces shut behind her. She sits practically on her haunches - _Addison Forbes Montgomery Shepherd hunched on a chemical toilet, Bizzy would positively die_ - silk La Perla chemise hoisted up to her hips, satin panties stained with shame

(which is a lot like hope)

and also a lot like blood.

That's what this is after all, to some of her patients at least, bleeding out. The real little death, another every month.

He doesn't call after her but for a wild moment she imagines what it would be like to yell through the flimsy tin door: "Just my period, honey!" The thought is bitterly amusing. They're not _that couple_, never have been; it's something Savvy might do. Big, brassy, bold. Addison presses sweating palms to her forehead.

Just a period, honey.

Just the end of this sentence. An exclamation point, louder than their marriage. A question mark of how they got here. A colon for everything that comes next; a semi because it's too hard to decide. Ellipses for the pause in their lives this godforsaken trailer represents. Tack on one more dot and they're done. It's a _full stop _in England where she studied for two semesters. Two words for time standing still.

The floor is cold under sueded slippers.

"Addison? What did you want to talk about?"

The heel of her hand hits the lightswitch as her back hits the mattress. Exhaling a puff of air, she speaks to what passes for a ceiling: "Nothing."

Nothing at all.

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><p><em>Reviews are warmly welcomed and greatly appreciated. <em>


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